Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is publish web content consistently to bring traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section of the series, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic system. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured to start bringing visitors automatically just by posting web content on your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as their greatest challenge online. Also, the business landscape is becoming increasingly more competitive and businesses are looking for any advantage they believe will help them get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over the competition. An expertly configured WordPress site gives you an immediate competitive advantage from the very beginning.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
To illustrate this here is an amusing little story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All is going well in the widget-making factory when things suddenly comes to a halt.
No one can figure out what is wrong and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walks straight towards the control box. After staring silently at the box for less than 3 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a teensy-weensy hammer from his shirt pocket and makes a very gentle tap near the left edge of the control unit.
Immediately, the whole machinery begins to work again.
The floor manager is overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager receives a bill for $5,000.
With great anger, the manager calls the expert. Why were they charged so much for so little time delivering such a minimal amount of work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving new visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a website set up and configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites and dozens of other online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although the solution to many problems is often quite easy once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to get desired functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts you need to set up to get specific results
- Which settings you need to configure in order to ensure that things will function as planned, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved and complicated. This is because it’s not as simple as installing one or two plugins, clicking on a button or two, or tweaking some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many parts such as your web server, your WP site, and various external sites and/or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your business will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various external sites or online solutions.
External Sites
The basic concept of choosing external sites is that all content should be published to a central location (your site) and from there, get automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external platforms to your network, content pointing back to your site will be automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social media sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your site will be given exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these third-party sites will need to be set up before configuring your site to speed up the configuration process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful data, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account, this information can be used to automate web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data have been set up, account data can be integrated with WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and and sent to other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account and entering site data with Bing Webmaster Tools, this information can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress provides users with a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your web traffic system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts before you can configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and attract new traffic to your site.
Set up accounts and profiles with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(There are many social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your social feed.
There are various platforms you can incorporate into your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Area)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(Notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading Settings
This section affects how your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to view the rest of the content from a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to ping your list of update services whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your articles, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow your site to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: How To Configure WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is completely immune from a cyber attack.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to hackers and bots.
More information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website …
(WordPress Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with members of their social communities can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your site easily using WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing features to your site with free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social share plugins allow you to select which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure For Increased Traffic Flow
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online (or plan to), it’s important that your website is found to comply with all regulations.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
If you need help understanding how to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog, go here:
Post Categories & Tags
Categories and post tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your pages.
(Categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s categories and tags during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites discover your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although Google can index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching online for your site enter the wrong web address or click on a dead hyperlink, they will typically be presented with a 404 error page …
(A 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is publish new content consistently to automatically generate web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and expertise required to perform the configuration process can take many web professionals months to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is addressed in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business with a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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